Begin with the evidence.

A hand-painted cotton from India’s Coromandel Coast, made for an export market—and preserved long enough to tell a global story.

Length of cotton ‘chintz’

Cotton; painted, resist- and mordant-dyed · 3.9 m long · The Metropolitan Museum of Art

“Look before you explain. What does its scale, color, or design suggest about the people who made and purchased it?”

Collect 4 more threads of evidence.